15 Notable Women in Science

Contributions to the scientific field

5/9/2017

Marie Curiewas a Polish and French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize as well as the first woman to be a professor at the University of Paris.

Rosalind Franklinwas an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer who made contributions to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid) and viruses, among other discoveries.

Barbara McClintockwas an American scientist and cytogeneticist who was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. She produced the first genetic map for maize, linking regions of the chromosome to physical traits.

Maria Goeppert-Mayer was a German-born American theoretical physicist, and Nobel laureate in Physics for proposing the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus.

Tu Youyou is a Chinese pharmaceutical chemist who discovered a cure to malaria, which had previously been resistant to quinine and other medicines. She won the Nobel Prize in 2015.

Gertrude Elion was an American biochemist and pharmacologist who shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with George H. Hitchings and Sir James Black.

Irene Joliot-Curie was a French scientist and the daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie.

Hedy Lamar was an Austrian and American film actress who helped develop a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes.

Lise Meitnerwas an Austrian-Swedish physicist who worked on radioactivity and nuclear physics.

Dorothy Hodgkin was a British biochemist who developed protein crystallography, for which she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964.

Marie Daly was an African-American chemist who studied cholesterol and heart attacks.

Jane Goodall is a primatologist, ethologist and anthropologist considered to be the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees.

Katherine Johnsonis an African-American physicist and mathematician who worked on early computers at NASA, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.

Dorothy Vaughn was a mathematician who worked for NASA and became the first African-American woman to supervise a staff at West Area Computers center.

Mary Jackson was an African-American mathematician and aerospace engineer at NASA, and became NASA’s first black female engineer.